How is it that a postcolonial Indian economy, once regarded as doomed because of an exploding impoverished population, is now seen as the beacon of hope for the future?

In this talk, Kavita Philip (UC-Irvine)) explores the links between the ways in which new forms of property have been redefined around the threat of the pirate, even as political economy has been revivified by the spirit of jugaad, an improvisational, contingent ethic of practice that putatively confounds the assumptions of universal progress and romantic localism.

Our predominant understanding of extinction relates to natural species extinctions caused largely by human actions. But in the 21st century categorical distinctions between humans and nonhumans or culture and nature are no longer tenable.

Today we also think of the extinction of cultural forms, such as languages, customs and traditions, operating systems, and public higher education. In the face of this extended sense of extinction, asking what comes after extinction is not only to inquire about the future of humans and nonhumans, but also to investigate to what extent the concept’s origins still inflect current understandings of extinction.

After Extinction will pursue the question of what it means to come “after” extinction in three different but related senses: temporal, epistemological, and spatial.